Biography

Gwendolyn Jensen was born in 1936 and grew up in Lansdowne, PA. She began writing poems when she retired in 2001 from Wilson College (Chambersburg, PA) where she had served as president for ten years. Her Bachelors degree is from the University of Hartford, her Masters from Trinity College (Hartford), and her Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut.

After teaching history at the University of New Haven she moved into administrative work serving as graduate dean at the University of New Haven, and then as academic dean, first at Western State College (Gunnison, CO) and then at Marietta College (Marietta, OH).

Her poems have been widely published in both electronic and print journals, including The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Harvard Review, Tears in the Fence, The Malahat Review, Measure, Salamander, and Sanskrit Literary Arts Magazine.

Birthright is her first book of poems. It was published in 2011 in a letterpress edition by Birch Brook Press and had a second printing early in 2012. Her second book, As if toward Beauty, also with Birch Brook Press, was published in 2015. Her third book is Graceful Ghost, also with Birch Brook Press and in a letterpress edition. It will be published toward the end of 2017 or early in 2018.